Let’s see. SMU gets the death penalty for the usual crap, but Penn State doesn’t? Bull*hit! they should have been banned for 5 years, demoted to Division 3A -for good, and denied ANY scholarships for eternity.
I suspect the NCAA knew if they put PSU on the Death Penalty it might not hold up, since PSU wasn’t on probation before...and thus, PSU would have grounds to appeal it.
And now that they are effectively on probation, they are now looking for the slightest violation in the next few years to slam them with the DP.
You seem to forget that the NCAA exists because of the member institutions, not the other way around. The big football schools already have a very tenuous relationship with the NCAA. So let’s say that the NCAA did some draconian penalties like you proposed. Then what?
Well, then let’s say that Penn State left the NCAA and began to talk to other big time football schools about leaving the NCAA: free of scholarship limits and revenue sharing and free to form a “super conference” that could command a whopping TV contract. How would that work out for the NCAA?
The NCAA knows this is possible. This is why schools like Ohio State, USC, Alabama, and Penn State get lesser penalties in football and schools like SMU get the death penalty.